London, United KingdomThursday, March 29, 2012–Saturday, April 28, 2012

Exhibition to be opened by the composer Alexander Goehr at 7.00pm on Wednesday 28th March 2012.

Piano Nobile is launching a solo show of 30 recent works by Thomas Newbolt to celebrate the artist’s 60th year and publication of a fully illustrated catalogue with introduction by art critic Martin Gayford.

Thomas Newbolt was born in 1951 and attended Camberwell School of Art in the 70’s. From there he gained an Italian government scholarship to study in Italy. More recently he has been part of the Arts School at Trinity College, Cambridge and the Prince’s Trust Drawing School. He is represented in numerous prestigious private and public collections including the Late Lillian Browse, now part of the Courtauld collection, as well as collections in Cambridge, the Bank of England and the Bank of America.

This latest series of works is based on the human form. Newbolt has been building up to this significant show for several years and it is, consequently, a long awaited opportunity for the public and collectors to see a body of his latest work.

Newbolt’s painting is just as much conceptual as it is figurative. His work centres on the human figure, particularly the head. In many ways the figures are the personification of thoughts, actions and ideas, using the medium of the human body that can be manipulated through expression and body language, to achieve his emotional aim in oil. His paintings should not be seen just as figures, but as structures, in a more abstract sense. His work often focuses on the vulnerability of feminine form and its use in today’s world.

He often paints at dusk and in failing light to create the atmosphere he desires. As the artist explains, “Its only when the painting gets into an unconscious area where you are in danger of losing it and will do anything to save it that the picture begins to work.”

Newbolt is a new category of British artist, pushing forward a new canon of figurative art. He looks to the future just as much as he does the past, using the figurative but combining it with the conceptual, sculpting a new direction for British painting.

Like Frank Auerbach and Lucien Freud, Newbolt’s work is all about oil paint and the discoveries that can be made with it. In his hands it becomes a medium full of mysterious surprises.